Infinity Blade 02 - Redemption Read Free Page A

said.
    Siris roared to his feet, ready to punch with the backs of his wrists, fingers flopping uselessly. If he could get his arms around . . .
    Around . . .
    He searched about, blind, swinging this way and that. Where was his enemy? What game was this? Would Raidriar give him hope, then crush him? Raidriar was a fool! Any advantage would be seized, would be used. And—
    “I never thought,” a weary voice said, “I would ever grow tired of killing you, Ausar.”
    Siris’s eyes finally started picking out light. He backed away from the shadow near the voice and put his back to the wall of the prison.
    Shadows became fuzzy images, which slowly became distinct. Raidriar sat on the floor, wearing only a loincloth and a ripped shirt stained with blood. He looked young—too young to be this ancient thing.
    No armor, of course. Siris had stripped that from his enemy early on, and had broken it as best he could, pounding it flat with rocks. That was the Dark Self’s influence. Take away the enemy’s weapon. Disarm him. Expose his vulnerabilities before going for the kill.
    Raidriar had done the same for Siris, of course. Often, one or the other would use bits of that armor as a weapon to murder his foe as he awoke. Most of the time, they just used their hands.
    Raidriar leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes, sighing. “Turns out I was wrong,” he said, his voice echoing in this cavernous chamber, lit dimly by the glow of ancient machinery hidden in the floor and ceiling. “I can grow tired of killing you. It took merely sixteen hundred and fifty-two murders. Apparently, even the most pleasing of tasks can grow mundane by repetition.”
    Siris rounded the chamber, keeping his distance. He picked out a chunk of metal, one of their shields, battered and broken, cracked down the middle. He tossed it aside.
    “Nothing to say?” Raidriar asked.
    “Fifty-one,” Siris said. His voice sounded ragged to his ears.
    “What?”
    “Sixteen hundred and fifty-one,” Siris said. “That’s how many times you’ve bested me. Not fifty-two, as you said earlier.”
    “And of the two of us, you’d trust your own memory above mine?” Raidriar sounded amused. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
    Siris grunted. He found his sword, but Raidriar had beaten it against the Worker’s throne over and over, rendering the weapon a mangled mess, broken halfway down. Siris sensed anger in those marks on the rock throne. They were mirrored by marks along the back, where Siris himself had pounded with his shield in a frenzied tempest, frustrated, powerless.
    The Dark Self was powerful, but it was also wild, temperamental.
    Siris picked up the broken sword.
    “How long,” Raidriar asked, “do you suppose he was playing us?”
    “I don’t know,” Siris said. “I doubt he originally wanted me to trap him in here.”
    “Are you certain?”
    Siris hesitated. “No.” He didn’t know anything, not any longer.
    “Perhaps you are right, though,” the God King said idly. “What kind of creature could put himself in such a helpless state? Powerless, no control—uncertain if he’d ever be freed? It reviles the senses and the mind alike.”
    Warily, Siris walked over near the God King. He passed a portion of the wall that was scraped and bloodied. At one point, the God King had apparently tried to claw his way through the rock—for all the good it did.
    Still, in a way he envied his enemy. Siris had been bound here by his soul, same as the Worker had been. Raidriar, however, had simply been dropped in—he was a casualty of location. The prison would keep him as surely as it kept anyone, but if he could get through those rocks, he could find freedom.
    Not Siris. He would never be able to escape, not unless he found a way to make someone else take his place.
    Convenient, he thought, stepping toward Raidriar, that I have another Deathless here to force into that role.
    But how? He’d have to be outside to set up the